D&AD Graduate Academy Day 5 - Confidence

I've just pitched the idea with the rest of my group, Knock Knock, about using humour as a process for creativity. In front of top industry creatives. In a Boardroom. At Iris Nation. And it wasn't scary. I wouldn't have been able to do that confidently last week. I think that that pretty much sums up my week at the D&AD Graduate Academy.

It has improved my confidence so much. From the Spring Project teaching us how to be more confident at the beginning of the week, I found it much easier to work in a group as I had the confidence to share my ideas and thoughts, without feeling intimidated, which is something I was initially nervous and worried about. I think it also has to do with our group dynamics and how we got on so well and made eachother laugh which created a comfortable environment so that we could all share our ideas without feeling intimidated. And that's exactly what our presentation was about. Visit our blog here. 

The experience that I've had this week has been so valuable and I feel incredibly lucky to have been given this opportunity. As I've said from Day 1, I really feel like I needed this experience and now feel confident that I can go and allow my creative brilliance to shine at any agency where I do an internship. And we've still got an afternoon to go! I don't want it to end!

D&AD Graduate Academy Day 2 - Gold

Somehow, Day 2 was even better than Day 1. I didn't think that was possible. I mentioned on twitter that it was life-changing and I really believe it was. I am going to actively practise as many things as I can from what I learned today, so that I can improve myself and be brilliant in every situation (particularly during internships). I've already started with what I learned yesterday about having neutral body language and I'm trying to adopt this as often as I can so that it becomes habit (in order for something to become a habit it needs to be continually practised for three weeks).


So what did we do? Andrew and Darius from The Spring Project gave us advice which was so valuable it was compared to gold. They used the '10 minute psychology in a box' to explain how we make decisions. 

Decisions are made on four levels, starting with the deepest level - your personal values and beliefs. Above this we have your intentions - what you intend to do based on these values and beliefs. On top of this we have the promises that we make so that we can reach those intentions. Finally we have the actions that we take in order to keep those promises. If these are aligned then we are being brilliant, if they are not aligned then we are not being brilliant. The strongest relationships are based on overlapping beliefs and values. If we understand our own beliefs and values, we can be clear with others and allow them to be clear with us. Therefore, I will be practising this alignment from now on and trying to apply it to every situation. 


It became clear throughout the morning that the most important thing is to have a clear intended outcome and not to get distracted by Life's Street Market of Distractions. In other words, don't let anything stop you or get in your way from keeping the promises you have made to yourself and others in order to reach your clear intended outcome. It is also necessary to put yourself in other people's shoes in order to see and understand their clear intended outcome. We need to ask how we can remove the pain from a situation, which will help us to spot opportunities for contribution. 


We explored how to improve our public speaking which I found to be incredibly helpful as I feel nervous about this. The key piece of advice was to speak loudly as this gives your voice clarity, energy and pace. From doing the exercise, and many others this week, I have learned that the thought of doing something is often much worse than actually doing it and once I have started doing it I proceed with confidence and find that it was actually easier than I thought it would be. As a result I'm going to try and concentrate on reaching my clear intended outcome instead of wasting time worrying which will not help me reach it any quicker.


Following this we received a very open brief addressing our own personal identity from Kevin Palmer from Kin and Derek Yates, which lead to an exercise that produced lots of food for thought about what identity is and how we can approach the project from different angles. I'm really looking forward to starting brainstorming it on Day 3. 

D&AD Graduate Academy Day 1 - Brilliance

It's been a while...mainly because I've been busy graduating, having a relaxing holiday in Italy and doing placements. Today was the first day of the D&AD Graduate Academy on which I won a place for my Best New Blood Award. It's a week long program organised for 100 students by D&AD to help us break into industry, the top 50 graduates at the end will be rewarded with an internship.


Darius and Andrew from The Spring Project lead us through a series of exercises throughout the day to improve our confidence by examining ourselves and looking at why we are brilliant and why others should care. By lunchtime I already felt more confident which helped with our lunchtime brief - to ask the public why they are brilliant and to commit an act of generosity.


After lunch we considered how we could be brilliant when we are doing internships and how confidence could help us be outstanding. We concluded that we needed to be indispensable and in order to do this we needed to spot opportunities to help people when they arise and always go above and beyond the commitments and promises we make. We also defined brilliance as 'bringing out the best in yourself more often'. 


The last part of the workshop was spent in groups admitting to what we were pretending (e.g. I'm pretending to be more confident than I really am), highlighting to ourselves that we pretend to be things that we are not in order to please people. This is in fact a waste of time and we should really be straight with people and concentrate on what we need to achieve with that person rather than wasting energy pretending to be something we're not. In the final exercise we wrote down two things we appreciated about each person in the group and gave these to them which was a really nice end to the session and made everyone feel good about themselves. 


The exercises were incredibly helpful, rewarding, encouraging and I couldn't have asked for a better or more appropriate experience at this point in my design career, when I really feel that I need that extra bit of confidence. It was also very refreshing to develop a part of myself which is not creative but still relevant. Andrew and Darius are fantastic trainers and I'm going to try and use the skills they have taught me in my own daily life, especially during my upcoming placements so that I can really make the most of my opportunities and show employers why 
I'm brilliant. 


Bring on Day 2!